Atlus released the English localization in North America on October 14th, 2014. It was released in Europe by NIS America on November 7th.

The period is some time in the near future after the events of the first game. In the town of Tamar in central Hispania, the Canaanites are being oppressed by the Divine Empire. They are heavily taxed, treated as slaves, and forced to use stones from their temple to build a new church to the Almighty Watos. All because the previous governor of Hispania, Hasdrubal Barca, had revolted against the empire seven years ago and failed.

Hamilcar "Hamil" Barca, son of Hasdrubal, is now leader of the Canaanites. However he is dumb, has no skills in magic or sword, and willingly allow imperial soldiers to beat him and laugh at him. All of the Canaanites are disappointed at their leader, and the Divine Empire thinks he's a joke. Behind the scenes, The Barca Faction are planning a rebellion. Unbeknownst to everyone, Hamil is an incredibly cunning youth. He wishes to prevent a rebellion at all costs, and does it by playing dumb. He hears to cry of a girl and finds her somehow having tangled her foot underneath the roots of a tree. She calls herself the goddess of harvest and war Astarte, but is unable to use any magic, to her surprise.

Hamil realizes a rebellion is planned, and on the way home that day harshly gets Tarte to leave town to prevent her being persecuted by The Divine Order for calling herself a goddess. He is then approached by Zaras who plan on using him to bait out and destroy the Barcid party. Hamil continues to play dumb and goes along with Zaras' plans in order to prevent the destruction of war falling on Hispania.

At the festival, Zaras unveils a surprise. Tarte has been captured and is about to be burnt at the stake for calling herself a goddess. For seven years, Hamil has prepared for this Ba'al festival. He is prepared to die and sacrifice the entire Barca Faction if it meant preventing a rebellion. But with Tarte unconscious, about to be burnt alive before him, Hamil breaks the facade, gives into his anger, and summon forth the God of War Melqart.

The rebellion has begun.

This series provides examples of:

Accidental Marriage: Hamil thought the religious ritual he performed meant he's married to Astarte. Tarte didn't. Not that she's complaining.

Of 7 female characters in the Character Introduction, 4 are front line fighters. This is higher than the percentage of male front line fighters to supportnote 50%, although that depends on how one wants to count Daphnis.

Hamil and Tarte takes turns declaring their love for each other as Melqart'sBlood Lust begins to take over Hamil.

Anti-Grinding: You get less experience against units of increasing lower level. But that doesn't stop "Apple Throwing". And then there's also the overlevel penalty to consider where characters cannot be overleveled compared to the highest leveled enemy on the field.

Arranged Marriage: Hanno tries to arrange one between Elissa and Hamil to cement an alliance, as she would be both a wife and a hostage. Both sides ends up backing down. Elissa joins the party to act as a hostage and combatant to cement the alliance instead.

A Taste of Power: The beginning of the game has Hamil transformed into a level 99 Melqart. Awesomeness ensues.

Awesome Moment of Crowning: Tarte crowns Hamil as Hero-King of Hispania at the conclusion of Chapter 6. With a Tiara of Wheat for Hamil and a Tiara of Flower for herself.

Though not a traditional crowning, at the end the signal flares from the remaining legions of The Empire shows they acknowledge Hamil's Imperium as the new ruler of the Hegemonic Empire

Batman Gambit: Izebel's plan for the Tartessos campaign. It requires both Hamil and Laelius to act exactly as she planned. And they do, because they both believe very strongly in protecting the innocent. And in the case of Hamil because he told her all his battle plans when he was a young child before he lost his memories.

Izebel comments to herself that Laelius, a knight of The Empire bent on restoring the Glory Days, does not know that during said days the common soldiers of the empire was responsible for most of the construction and would have been perfectly able of reconstructing a stone arch bridge.

BFS: The Greatsword of Tanit. Tarte probably wouldn't be able to even lift it if she wasn't the Goddess of War.

Big Damn Heroes: The slaves and gladiators are on the ropes, unable to break through the Praetorians standing between them and the Alps and about to be wiped out. Just then, Hamil and Tarte, leading the entire alliance burst through the glaciers behind the Praetorians and saves the day.

Took a Level in Kindness: Happens before the story starts. Hamil was a very cold and distant child. He doesn't think twice in resorting to scorched earth tactics or destroying his own capital city in order to win a battle simulation. And he doesn't understand why his father find this sad. In the seven years after Hasdrubal's death, having had to watch over the Canaanites suffer under the rule of The Empire, he learns why. He now does his absolute best to protect everything and everyone. He will still use those tactics, but only if there is absolutely no other choice.

Chekhov's Gag: Tarte trying to gain worshipers, usually with Kleito teasing her over Hamil. Tarte is trying to gain worshipers to wake up her clan, the rest of the Ba'al gods. She succeeds and in the climax the Ba'al gods saves her life.

Chekhov's Gunman: Golyat first show up commanding his legions to crush Hispania's rebellion. As he retreats, Hamil offers him land grants for his veterans if he switch sides, something The Empire did in its heyday. He admits the offer is very enticing but it's too late and they'll loose. Fast forward to the final approach on Alba Longa, as The Party wonder if any of The Empire's legions will switch sides, they find him having already put the city under siege and is waiting for them.

Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Hamil raises the battle cry of Astarte, and all Canaanites at the Ba'al Festival follows suit. This empowers Tarte, which prevents both her and Hamil from being burnt alive.

Also discussed. Monomachus suggests drumming up religious fervor to turn the entire thing into a war of religion to solve their manpower shortage, with the people of Hispania warshipping Astarte and the Ba'al gods fighting against The Empire who worship Watos. Despite frequently voicing her desire for followers, Tarte says she will not go along with the plan, as people so forced and/or brainwashed are not true believers. Hamil agrees, and decides to form The Alliance to solve their manpower shortage.

The Battle Didn't Count: Before your final encounter with them, battles with Izebel and/or Laelius always have a timed survival or some form of escape as the winning condition, with defeating them being a bonus option. But no matter whether or not you defeat them, the story always pretend you took the escape option.

Gender Reveal: Starts when Daphnis lies to the slavers that he's a girl to give Elissa a chance of escape. Elissa stands up and reveals that Daphnis is a guy, while she's the girl. All the girls of the party follow suit.

Gods Need Prayer Badly: The Ba'al gods do as people's beliefs are the only thing that ties them to earth and prevent them from going into a coma. Tarte at first could not cast even a single heal spell and is no different from a teenage girl because her people are forced by the Divine Empire to worship Watos, and her temples are torn down to build churches. Only by Hamil's desperate pleas for guidance was she even able to take form. Her powers come back to her on the Canaanites' battle cry of Astarte, and prevents both of them from being burnt alive.

Good Republic, Evil Empire: Played with a bit. While The Empire is evil, it wasn't until the Divine Church took over. Hamil doesn't really intend on destroying The Empire but return it to what it was. At the end he reinstates the senate as the ruling body, but leads the discussion as the first citizen.

Laelius is ordered by Izebel to massacre a village. He then finds out a separate force is on its way to massacre the village so those villagers would die even if he disobeyed orders. So he does one to save the villagers.

Heroic Sacrifice: The major theme of the story is sacrifice.note The first two lines of the OP are "When you get your hands on something important, you must throw away something. If you can't choose what to toss away, you will continue to loose things while gaining nothing. So there are lots. Some major ones are:

Hadrubal sacrificing his own life to ensure he's son's rebellion in the future will succeed

Izebel "killing" the man she loves, enduring the hatred of all her old friends, colleagues, and little-brother figure, and finally loosing her own life to shield Hispania from the worst of The Empire while preparing La Résistance for what's to come.

Tarte luring Melqart with her own blood, preparing to die to satisfy Hamil/Melqart's Blood Lust. Hamil will have none of it and runs himself through with his sword to prevent Melqart from taking over and killing Tart.

Monomachus and the old Barcid Party stay behind to defend Hispania to buy time for Hamil to take out the Holy Emperor, then lures the Kraken to Tartessos to buy a few more days time for the rest of Hispania, then dies defending Tartessos.

King Incognito: The Party does this to travel to the Rhenus frontiers. There they meet a barbarian fur merchant girl Artio who turns out to be princess of the Suebi.

Kiss of Life: Hamil drinks lots of water after their ship sinks. Heal spell has no use and Tarte is getting desperate. Kleito and Charis says he needs proper care, hardening Tart's resolve. Subverted when she gives him a full force punch to his stomach instead.

Level Grinding: Players can grind levels on free maps. The experience gained decrease the higher the difference in level, but there's always using skills and items on yourself, known as "Apple Throwing".

Literal-Minded: No Tarte. Charis can not literately shoulder your weight.

Lovable Coward: Dion, who always suggests running or surrendering at the first sign of trouble.

Lost Technology: Tartessos has a bunch from the Precursors and earlier human times. The Divine Order is also actively suppressing knowledge, and many characters mention human technology that has recently been lost.

Meaningful Name: While all major characters, and lots of minor characters, gets one, special mention goes to Hamil who's name has multiple meanings. Hamilicar Barca is the father of Hannibal Barca, famous Carthaginian general of Second Punic War who almost brought the The Roman Republic to its knees. The name Hamilicar means brother of Melqart. Barca means lightning (Hamil's element). In universe it's stated the name Hamilicar is reserved for the member of the Barcid family who is the strongest and most closely tied to Astarte.

Nintendo Hard: A frequent complaint on Japanese release is "Easy Mode isn't". It was common enough the developers made a Very Easy Mode.

Then Atlus decide to scrape Easy Mode and just rename Very Easy Mode into the new Easy Mode.

Not So Different: When discussing the prospects of an alliance with Qart Hadast, Monomachus calls them cowards for abandoning their previous alliance as soon as the war turned against Hispania, and Hanno not a real friend and family because he just sat back and watched Hasdrubal die. Enneads reminds him that they, loyal subordinates, also sat back and watched him die.

Obfuscating Insanity: As Hamil is being taken over by Melqart'sBlood Lust, he pretends that he's already taken over so that Tarte would kill him before he's taken over and kills her. She sees through it right away and chooses to be eaten alive rather than kill Hamil. This prompts Hamil to try to kill himself in order to save Tarte.

Obfuscating Stupidity: Hamil pretends to be a dumb, unambitious youth lacking any sword skills, magical powers, or will to avenge his father or frees his people. He did this for seven years to prevent a rebellion by the Barcid Party for as long as he could, and at the same time save up enough magic to give Melqart enough power to defeat the imperial army if the rebellion does occur. He throws off the disguise to save Tarte.

Peninsula Of Powerleveling: Buy a lot of apples. Go to the very first area, set the difficulty to Easy Mode, and use the apple all the way. Put it back to Hard mode before finishing the stage (if concerned about the difficulty trophy). Of course, this is prevented by the "overlevel" penalty and preventing getting the S rank at the end of the level, but if players don't care about that one, congratulations: you've just made the main storyline a cakewalk. The real application of this for players who want to play at Hard Mode, is that players only need one character at level 99 while the rest can be at the levels lower than the highest leveled enemy and still get the S Rank at the end of the stage.

Punch Clock Villain: Aemilia. Originally head bureaucrat, member of the reform party, and Hasdrubal's ally at court. Now she's an inspector of the ruins of the aqueducts outside Qart Hadast and does the bare minimum to earn a living.

Recurring Boss: Izebel and Laelius. Izebel is impossible to kill straight up during your first encounter with her on the highest difficulties even with Melqart (though you can still kill her other ways). They both get very gradually easier.

Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Hamil against Izebel and the Divine Empire. Subverted at Eburon. Hamil pretends to fly into one on seeing Izebel at the beginning of the assault on the bridge of Eburon, but is actually just buying time for the rest of the assault team to destroy the bridge. Once the destruction of the bridge is certain, he almost flies into a real one.

Kleito and Tarte arguing over getting worshipers, usually Hamil. Doubles as Chekhov's Gag.

Simon making a joke, and getting threatened with burning his staff.

Shown Their Work: Surpassing the first game. The amount of details corresponding to the Classical period, the Punic Wars, and Phoenician mythology is amazing.

The Hero is based on Hannibal Barca but named after his father. Monomachus is a real life Carthaginian general under Hannibal. Enneads is a book on Neoplatonism. Dion is short for Diogenes. Charis is one of the three Graces. Laelius is general and friend of Scipio Africanus. Aemilia is Scipio's wife. Astarte, Tanit, Eshmun and Melqart are all real Phoenician gods, and were really at one time thought of as two gods, Tanit-Astarte and Eshmun-Melqart.

Tamar is roughly Toletum. Avron is a mix of Hibera and Emporion. Tartessos, a mix of Atlantis and Tenochtitlan, is named after one of the earliest Phoenician colonies on the Iberian Peninsula. Cemenelum, part of modern Nice, was the capital of the Roman province of Alpes Maritimae. Imperial Capital Alba Longa, based on Ancient Rome, is named after the real city state that founded the Latin League and was a major rival to Rome. Carthage appears with its Phoenician name of Qart Hadast.

Transferable Memory: The Sword of Melqart holds the memories of all its past users. Not being strong or mature enough to use the sword would cause a memory wipe on the user.

Trap Is the Only Option: Everyone can see that the attack on Tamar is an attempt to lure the main Hispanic forces out of Tartessos for battle. As the undefended village is where the families of many of the party members live, they sally forth anyway.

Vigilante Man: Hamil, before the start of the game. Particularly brutal soldiers and unsavory tax collectors who came to his town had a tendency to "disappear." He covers his tracks thoroughly enough (waiting until they're in the vicinity of another town, constructing plausible causes of death) that even after his Obfuscating Stupidity drops, only Dion thinks to connect it to Hamil. In fact, he covers it up so well that a statistician sees the corresponding improvement in conditions without a clear cause and intuits the presence of such a vigilante, which is enough to nearly thwart Hamil's surprise attack on the bridge at Eburon.

War Elephants: Noa the elephant. Tarte and Charis can ride it in battle. Also the other elven elephants Tarte summons as part of The Cavalry.

War Is Hell: Stated often and sometimes shown. Hamil considered accepting the enslaving of his entire people to avoid war. Saul was willing to let slide agents from The Empire buying slaves and dead bodies to prevent war. Until Hamil points out to him that he's only prolonging the inevitable, which he knew, and said agents took Artio which would cause war to errupt anyway.

Wholesome Crossdresser: Daphnis crossdresses so he can follow Elissa everywhere as her bodyguard. He fools everyone at first sight, and makes the goddess of war and barbarian princess complain about how to be ladylike.

Xanatos Gambit: Izebel pulls a simple one when she intercepts The Party on the high seas. She has the Kraken attack the rear of the ship. She and her soldiers then board from the front. If The Party did not realized this trap and moved to the rear to deal with the Krakken, they get attacked from the rear and defeated. If they realized this trap and did not move, the entire party would need to be at the ship's front to deal with her superior forces, leaving the Krakken free to sink the ship.

You Killed My Father: Hamil to Izebel. It turns out she didn't. Hasdrubal took his own life. But before doing so he ordered Izebel to pretend as though she did it.

You Shall Not Pass: Monomachus stays behind as the party prepare to teleport out of Tartessos to buy time for their teleportation.

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